


Groundhog Day

by aboutbunnies



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:29:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1611800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aboutbunnies/pseuds/aboutbunnies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time loops. Retcon. Holograms. (It's all sex, sex, sex with you people.) <i>As a wonder drug, this thing's got potential.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Groundhog Day

Two weeks.

Five years.

It's all the same, really, this damned time loop. Two weeks, five years, the same except when it's not. It's torture of the kind only the Time Agency could cook up, of course. Torture and bliss all in one. What else is there to do, living the same two weeks for five years straight, besides fuck and try to kill each other and then fuck some more?

(Let it never be said Jack is the wife. No, never. It's John who insists on doing the cooking – he's always loved fire; it's John who insists on doing the cleaning – he's always loved chemicals. Jack is only too happy to oblige.

It's John - “call me Vera, baby” - who dons the skirt and colors his lips an obscene shade of pink and drags sharpened, painted nails down Jack's thighs. Jack is _only_ too happy to oblige.)

It's a heady kind of torture. Jack craves it as much as he hates it. They are covered in bruises just as much from regular brawls as they are from the fucking, and the drink and the drugs dull the pain to a constant throb. He can't get enough.

...Except when he can.

It's the monotony does him in, eventually. Oh, don't get him wrong: they are nothing if not inventive. It's exciting, each one trying to outdo the other in appetite, style, endurance. Perversion.

And it's still. The same. Two. Weeks. Over. And. Over.

Jack has _never_ had that good an attention span.

So, sometime into year three – or week two, however you're counting – he takes something home from the office. Spice things up, you know. It's a drug the Time Agency has just started producing, sedative mixed with amnesia and still in the beginning stages of testing; of course it's the amnesia part that appeals to Jack. (Of course, it's also strictly forbidden to take it from the Agency, which is another highly appealing factor of the whole thing.)

Preliminary tests show – he reads the goddamn paperwork, even, look at him, such a good office boy – the amnesia can, so far, only be effective on the past ten minutes. The Agency hopes to be able to expand this, and is beginning to look for test subjects. Or so the paperwork says.

Jack gets half-hard already, thinking about the possibilities. About forgetting, even for a short while. He pockets a bottle.

\-----

Back at their quarters, he considers, briefly, mixing the drug into John's drink, just to see what would happen. But then, John's being ridiculous, one of his manic phases, running his mouth about god-knows-what-or-who, almost literally bouncing off the walls. And Jack dumps the dose into his own glass, instead, watching the crystals dissolve. And then he growls, something he knows catches John's attention, every time:

“Come here and fuck me, you idiot.” And predictably, John's clothes are off before Jack even finishes the drink.

He's surprised to find, as John prepares him, the sedative seems to work rather quickly. He can feel his body growing heavier, and John's never-ceasing chatter while his hands work Jack over fades to a faint buzz before there's nothing.

\-----

Jack wakes suddenly, in a panic, with no idea how he'd come to be here, face down on their bed, John slamming into him from above. He cries out, loud, and tenses immediately, feeling the sharp burn-pain as John reacts to him. His pulse is going wildly, bordering on full-blown panic with the shock of waking mid-fuck, and between the friction against bedsheets, the panic, and John's incoherent babbling as he thrusts, Jack comes – sudden and pulsing and violent.

Later, he finds the bottle from the Agency in his coat pocket, his empty glass beside the bed, and thinks he knows what happened. He feels himself grow half-hard again, just on the absent memory of it.

As a wonder drug, he thinks, this thing's got potential.

>>>>>>>>>>

It's a week after they toss Hart back through the Rift, and it's depressing, though not altogether surprising, that Ianto's already stopped waiting for Jack to make good on his offer of a date. Which is just as well, he supposes – he's still feeling strange following Jack's disappearance and reappearance, and Hart's spectacularly horrifying visit, the odd mention of someone named Gray that's got Jack all dark and moody – bit of whiplash from it all, he thinks.

They are their own cliché, Ianto thinks, a little bitterly – Jack brooding in his office, Ianto hiding in the archives. It makes him feel pathetic. Needy. And Christ, does he hate needy.

He finds it in the archives one evening, and picks up the small device with a sort of curious irritation – the rest of the team _knows_ never to attempt to file something down here without his knowledge. He taps on his comm, ready to scold whoever-it-was (Owen or Jack, he thinks; the girls are too considerate for that, while Owen would do it to spite him and Jack would just _forget_ ), but something makes him pause. He turns the device in his hands, considering. He could show it to Jack. File it properly.

Instead, his thumb brushes, experimentally, over the green button on its side.

It's a hologram, not unlike the one that'd shown up out of Jack's wrist strap, blue and a little wavering, but this one shows an entire room, and there's no sound.

Ianto recognizes Jack's image straight off; the man's lounging on a small bed, a drink in his hand. Ianto watches, fascinated, as Jack opens a small, prescription-style bottle and taps something into the glass. He pockets the bottle and his mouth moves, speaking to someone the holo doesn't let him see.

The other person comes into view soon enough, stripping as Jack sips the doctored drink on the bed.

John Hart.

Ianto looks away, cursing to himself, sure now he knows who'd planted this particular piece of tech in the archives. Partners in _every_ way, indeed. John _Fucking_ Hart.

When he looks back at the display, Hart is doing just that – fucking Jack – and the last thing Ianto wants to do is watch the insane, pompous arsehole's homemade porn, but he finds he can't look away again.

He watches with a kind of muted horror as Jack appears to slowly pass out on the bed, Hart seemingly oblivious. And when Jack startles awake, only minutes later, Ianto sucks in a sharp breath. The panic on Jack's face upon reviving, even in wavering blue holograph, is all too familiar. He watches as both men come, fast and sudden, and then he punches the green button again.

Mercifully, the holograph disappears.

Ianto's breath is coming quickly now, and he sets the device down again, carefully. He's getting hard, despite his disgust. And slowly, it falls into place:

Jack hadn't panicked upon coming back to life, but upon _waking up_. The drink. The bottle of drugs. Passing out, then awakening, looking like he _didn't remember_ how he'd got there.

Ianto drags his hand across the front of his trousers when he realizes. He groans.

\-----

He certainly knows how to mix Retcon, the correct dosage for the proper time period one needs to forget. They'd all had to learn that, early on in Jack's time away. He measures the powder out carefully and fills one capsule.

Jack's in his office, and barely looks up when Ianto enters. “Coffee, Ianto?” he asks, distractedly, and Ianto moves to his desk, both hands flattened on the surface.

“No.”

Jack looks up, surprised, and Ianto takes the moment to slide the capsule across the desk to him.

“What's this?”

Ianto feels a spike of anger, quick, muted by arousal. “You know what it is, Jack. You created it, or at least perfected it, didn't you?” He takes his suit coat off, lays it carefully over a chair. The belt comes off next, and Jack stands up.

“No.”

“Yes,” Ianto replies, simply, and reaches over the desk to push one of Jack's braces down over his shoulder, thumbs open the top button of his shirt. “It's nothing you haven't done before.”

Jack's eyebrows raise in mild shock, maybe disapproval. “How do you --”

“I know everything, Jack,” Ianto insists, low and almost mocking. “Or have you _forgotten_?”

There's a flush that starts on Jack's face, high on his cheekbones, and Ianto can see the other man's arousal beginning – fueled by a memory, perhaps. (Or by Ianto's being rather uncharacteristically insistent, but he's not holding his breath on that one.)

“He's a part of your past, and I want him gone,” Ianto continues, throwing Jack's own words back at him, anger and arousal one and the same, now.

Jack rounds the desk and stands too close to Ianto, looking him in the eye. He blindly reaches for the capsule and holds it up. “Trust you'll remind me of this later, Ianto Jones,” he says, and swallows the pill dry.

_fin_


End file.
